Email scams are not just bothersome, they can also be dangerous. Scammers, spammers -- and those looking to perpetrate identity theft -- send you emails from names you recognize, like a friend, a bank, paypal, facebook and/or other brand names in an attempt to get you to click thru. However, response to these fraudulent emails you do at your own peril. But have no fear, there is a simple solution to avoid having your personal info grabbed by cyber thieve, without ignoring what might be a legit email notification.

So you've received an email from someone you know, asking for your response. Perhaps they want to Friend You on Facebook, for example. It may look something like this:

You see a name you know, so you don't think about a quick click-thru to accept. In this case I was tipped off because it came FROM me TO me. Alert, alert, you don't have to be a genius to know you didn't friend yourself. A little voice in your head right now should be screaming "Danger Will Robinson, danger, danger!"

But you know the person the email came from, right? Or it may be an email from your bank, or paypal or some other vendor you have an account with, telling you that your account has been frozen -- or is going to be frozen -- unless you verify you account and "click here."

SIMPLE SOLUTION: when you receive an email with a call to action, do two things.

First, simply login to the account that it (supposedly) came from. If it was from Facbook, for example, then that friend request will appear in your notification alert. If it were from an institution, you'll have a call to action or on-site mail alert once youy've logged in. If not, then the email you received was bogus, and you avoided danger.

Second, if it was a bogus email, assign that email to your spam list and mark all future emails from that address for instant deletion.

The Internet is a great resource for knowledge and entertainment, yet like the world we live in is also full of those that will hurt, or take avantage of you given the opportunity.

Facebook Ranks Top 'Enterprise' Collaboration Platform, so CIOs who allow their staffs to drive their entire social media-driven collaboration strategies risk endangering their organizations, warns the U.K. arm of the joint Accenture-Microsoft joint venture Avanade.But ...

Why would they even let that happen? After all, companies like Avanade parent Microsoft have been successfully seeding enterprises with tools like SharePoint for many years.

The problem: while CIOs, aided by firms like Avanade, have been providing enterprise-caliber tools, no one's been doing much collaboration work with them. This has left a huge vacuum that Avanade says is being rapidly filled with homegrown, grassroots-driven, consumer-based technology instead.

"To be led completely by your workforce when it comes to collaboration is asking to end up with a completely undisciplined and unmanageable environment," Andrew Barber, deputy lead in the collaboration practice of the global consulting firm's British arm, told InformationWeek.

"It's very easy to let your corporate data end up on Facebook. Whether you should is quite a different matter."

Indicating a sort of "bring your own software" dynamic, Avanade's data shows Facebook is a collaboration platform twice as popular as SharePoint -- 74% to 39%. It's also four times more popular than IBM Open Connections (17%) and six times more popular than Salesforce's Chatter (12%).

The study, of 4,000 users and 1,000 business and IT decision-makers in 22 countries, also said 77% of managers and 68% of users say they now use some form of enterprise social networking technology. IT decision makers said such social technologies make their jobs more enjoyable (66%), more productive (62%) and "help them get work done faster" (57%). All in all, said Avanade, of those businesses currently using social collaboration tools, 82% want to use more of them in the future.

But which ones? The study claimed, perhaps somewhat optimistically, that decision makers planning to adopt social technologies put SharePoint and Chatter (tied at 23%) at the top of their list of collaboration deployments planned in the coming year. Thus, though Facebook is ranked number one among social collaboration technologies in use today (74%), when asked what social tools businesses want to adopt in the next year, "Facebook fell to the very end of the list with only eight percent of decision-makers respondents noting it as a priority," said Avanade in a statement.

However, Barber admitted that IT-led, SharePoint-centric collaboration projects don't always succeed. Instead, he offered up Yammer, now also a part of the Microsoft technology stack, as a potentially more successful tool for CIOs to offer. "In many ways, that's a model of how grassroots-led collaboration can work really well, and add in the social flavor of workplace conversations in a much less dangerous way than letting people just go straight to Facebook," he said Monday.

For the study, Avanade interviewed 1,000 C-suite executives, business unit leaders and senior decision makers in the IT departments of organizations with at least 1,000 employees, in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the Nordics, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. It also polled 4,000 end users in organizations of 500 employees or more in all the same countries except for Brazil. All fieldwork was conducted between March 13 and April 16.

]]>Tips for Internet & DesktopThu, 23 May 2013 09:57:41 +0000Social Business Not Dead, Just Business As Usualhttp://intechcreative.com/library/business-tips/item/256-social-business-not-dead-just-business-as-usual
http://intechcreative.com/library/business-tips/item/256-social-business-not-dead-just-business-as-usual

It wasn't long ago that companies such as Jive and Yammer were proclaiming the era of the social enterprise. Knowledge workers no longer would be slaves to email. The best parts of social media would find their way to the workplace (sans photos of drunken friends). Knowledge and data would be found and shared with ease. Communication would be neither push nor pull but one or the other in the most appropriate times.

And indeed the social enterprise has shown its worth. Insurance giant Allstate's 10-day innovation blitzes spring to mind: Practical applications of internal crowdsourcing and collaboration techniques to inspire new business ideas have become part of Allstate's culture. In vertical industries like education, social collaboration solutions like Edmodo are re-writing how teachers and students interact and learn.

The question now isn't whether such tangible results, or even less lofty ones, are worth pursuing. They are. The challenge now is how to wire social constructs into all business practices. Soon enough, social business will simply be business as usual.

The technologies and platforms are still important, and will become more so, but companies will harness their power more in the context of business tasks and within "non-social" applications.

[ Join us at the E2 Conference in Boston, June 17 - 19, where we will feature discussions like this in our conference tracks and on our keynote stage, including some of the companies discussed here. ]

Adam Pisoni, Yammer's co-founder and now the general manager of engineering in Microsoft's Office division, talks about a future filled with context. "Social feeds are just a user interface," Pisoni says, emphasizing that social messages are encoded with information such as location, conversation participants, roles and other data often derived from mobile (and, in the future, wearable) devices. That infusion of informational structure and relevance is changing the potential of social interaction. Business users connect not for the sake of conversation (being social), but to complete a task, share knowledge and discover opportunity -- doing so with context is far more efficient and effective. Marketing opportunities might be more ripe for exploitation when, say, location and weather data are factored in, for example. (Pisoni will be part of the E2 keynote lineup, and we'll cover that ground.)

Yammer competitor Jive, another early social business leader, finished its most recent fiscal quarter with 33% year-over-year revenue growth, including strong customer renewal numbers. The vendor's latest product reflects its work on partnerships: integrations with Box.com and Salesforce.com -- to drive specific business outcomes, around shared documents and projects, or sales opportunities, for example. Jive's goal is to make other business processes work better within Jive, to make it a hub of communications to simply "get work done," a company spokeswoman says.

Salesforce is the most visible driver of social business in the context of an enterprise application, making Chatter a core service of its cloud-based CRM offering. Now, having hammered home the social enterprise message, CEO Marc Benioff is talking more about customer-centricity, where other data points, such as location awareness and identity management (read: more context), are important. "All of these things are taking us to a customer revolution, and it's the next logical step for our industry," Benioff said at a recent gathering in New York.

A YouTube channel can put your business in front of today's largest online viewing audience. Some 800 million people worldwide visit YouTube every month, many of them to research and discover products and services before investing in them.

If your company can reach even a fraction of that audience with your own branded YouTube video channel, the time and effort to create one can pay off, says Michael Miller, author of YouTube for Business: Online Video Marketing For Any Business (Que Publishing, 2nd edition, 2011). "YouTube is an incredibly effective tool for attracting new customers and even more effective for serving existing customers."

Choose a well-defined goal for your YouTube channel before uploading videos, suggests Lane Shackleton, product manager for YouTube. "Having a clear vision of what you are building the channel for helps clarify not only the type of video content you'll provide, but also exactly what you hope to gain from providing it," he says. For example, do you want to showcase new products, drive sales, boost traffic to your website, engage current and future customers or simply tell your brand story?

RevZilla.com, a Philadelphia-based motorcycle apparel, parts and accessories online retailer, designed its YouTube channel to answer common customer questions about sizes and fit for many of its products. Most of Revzilla's 2,000-plus YouTube videos show staff members trying on jackets and helmets and discussing which sizes best match their body types.

2. Do I need to create multiple channels?

If your company sells distinctly different products and services, you might consider rolling out several YouTube channels tailored to each one. For example, Procter & Gamble has its own YouTube channel, as well as channels for many of its brands, including Gillette, Pampers and Tide.

People come to YouTube to be entertained, educated and informed, not to watch commercials, Miller says. "The idea is to put helpful, informative videos on YouTube that enhance your company's image without being overly promotional," he says.

For example, BBQGuys.com, a Baton Rouge, La.-based site that sells grills and outdoor cooking accessories, offers cooking tutorial videos on its YouTube channel. The videos teach people how to barbeque meals quickly, while driving viewers' back to the BBQ Guys' online store.

5. How should I describe and tag my videos?

Video descriptions should be concise -- no more than a couple of short sentences. Shackleton suggests including the URL to your company's website or online store in the first sentence of the video description to try to encourage visits.

6. How should I organize my video content?Instead of presenting your videos in a single long list, group them into playlists by topic or theme. With a little navigation, viewers can more easily find videos that interest them.

7. Should I produce my own videos and how often should I post them? The decision to shoot your own videos or hire a production company depends on how much time and money you're willing to invest. If your resources are limited, Shackleton suggests simply shooting videos with your smartphone or an HD video camera. Over time, as your profits and marketing budget increase, you can invest in better recording equipment, lighting and perhaps even a studio.

Upload new videos as often as your schedule and budget allow. "If you post a new, interesting video every week, then people will eventually start showing up automatically for you," Shackleton says. "You'll build a repeat audience."

The 8 worst Windows 8 annoyances and how to fix them, because all new operating systems have a learning curve. But due to its unique blend of new and old interfaces, Windows 8′s is particularly steep. I have myself found it annoying and gratifying at the same time; I love some of the features, and struggle through others. I came across a few articles that walk you through some of Window 8's funtionality, and how to create work-a-rounds.

Whether it’s a menu system that forces you change screens to launch an app or a pair of dueling control panels that each contain different settings, you often have to work harder to perform the same tasks as in Windows 7. Though you can’t solve all these issues on your own — the Start button is gone for good — you can make the most of Windows 8 with these tips.

1. No more Start menu

Multitasking in Windows 8 is like dating Sybil. Because there's no more Start menu, users are encouraged to leave the desktop environment and go to the Modern UI Start screen, just to launch other desktop apps that take you right back to the desktop. Not only does switching screens take more time than simply launching a menu, it takes you out of context by pushing your work in the first application off-screen, making it easy to lose track of what you were doing.

Fortunately, there are several ways to avoid going through the Start screen to launch desktop apps. You can install a third-party Start menu, create keyboard shortcuts or pin applications to the taskbar.

2. Switcher Groups All Desktop Apps Into Just One Thumbnail

If you want proof that desktop applications are second-class citizens in Windows 8, look no further than the Switcher menu where you'll find separate thumbnails for all of your open Windows 8 applications. The entire desktop gets just one thumbnail, though, no matter how many different programs are running on it.

If you want to find to a program that's running on the desktop, you must navigate from the Switcher menu back to the desktop and look at the windows or taskbar there, a huge waste of time and mental energy.

The good news is that you can switch between all of your tasks using the good old-fashioned ALT Tab key combination. Also, if you dock the desktop next to your primary app in the Metro UI, you'll see a list of tiles representing all of your open desktop apps.

3. You Must Slide Away the Lock Screen Before Logging In

Sometimes it seems like Windows 8 was designed to make orthopedists rich, because the new OS asks PC users to perform so many unnecessary clicks and mouse gestures. The most blatant waste of time and muscle movement is caused by the cutesy lock screen that you must close by either dragging it offscreen or clicking on it (the faster method) every time you boot or wake your computer.

Tablet users may like to see the weather and time when their devices are inactive, but on PCs, the display is nothing more than a giant roadblock that stands between you and your login prompt.

Fortunately, you can make the lock screen disappear permanently. Just enable the "Do not display lock screen" setting in the under Computer Configuration > Administrative Tools > Control Panel > Personalization in the Local Group Policy editor.

4. The Power Button is One Gesture and Three Clicks Away

Since Microsoft designed Windows 8 with the world of always-on tablets in mind, the company thinks you'll need to shut down and restart so rarely that these functions are buried in the menu structure. In Windows 7, the Shut Down button is displayed prominently on the Start menu, whereas in Windows 8, the suggested method is to pull out the Charms menu, click the Settings charm, click the Power button and then select Shut Down from a menu.

If you don't have time and shoulder muscles to waste, you can create your own shortcuts for both the Shut Down and Restart functions. Just assign the shortcuts to the command-line commands "shutdown /s /t 0" (shutdown) and "shutdown /r /t 0" (restart), respectively. Be sure to pin these shortcuts to the Start screen and taskbar for easy access.

Getting stuff done is at the root of any business venture. It may sound trivial, but many startups strategize themselves right out of business -- because they don’t get stuff done!

Launching a business and turning it into a revenue-generating enterprise is daunting. Becoming self-sustaining and profitable all the more so. However, that is just the warm-up drill; the real chore is to stabilize, manage and grow that business in an ever-changing world.

This is especially true for my company Intech Creative LLC, a software technology and wholesale web services company. New frameworks, platforms and tools are evolving in the marketplace every day, creating the delicate balance between “doing” and “learning” that has to be maintained to remain viable.

According to Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive ofﬁcer, the world creates 5 exabytes of data every two days. That is roughly the same amount created between the dawn of civilization and 2003. Take a moment to absorb that concept!

With all the data being created, technology is expanding and evolving at an exponential rate to accommodate it. Cloud computing has become all the rage; mobile is in its infancy and still mind-boggling, and Big Data the new holy grail to company planning. And while the new Microsoft Surface software and the flexible tablets being developed by Plastic Logic and Intel are amazing, the next five years -- with holographic computers -- will make many futuristic sci-fi films look severely out of date.

Every entrepreneur has different skill sets. Some are great visionaries, but terrible managers. Others are great with people-interaction yet poor with content and business process.

Whether your strength is abstract, analytical, or manageriale, those that thrive and succeed are those that recognize their own shortcomings as well as they recognize their strengths, and like a basketball team built around a great scorer, for example, can assemble a team to enhance their strengths and fill the gaps of their own shortcomings.

The older we get the less insatiable our ego-driven appetite becomes. This is a good thing. While a healthy ego is a needed

ingredient for success, one also requires a bit of humility -- to not only openly admit our shortcomings to others, but ourselves, which allows us the willingness to seek out and acquire the skills and knowledge we lack.

Having said that however, never before has there been so much information. Never before has it come at us at such blinding speeds: blink and you’ve just missed key information. How do we stay ahead, or at least keep up to such a rapidly changing marketplace without having our heads overload?

We can’t.

So the answer seems pretty clear: we need to assemble our own “A” teams; made up of passionate employees that we can nurture, motivate to become experts in their area of contribution, and apply that knowledge for the benefit of the team.

This makes the hiring of the right employees key to any potential success for a business in this new millennium. It spotlights the need for intelligent teams, collaboration across departments and pay-grades.

In the old days a few rock stars could carry a company. No longer. The newly-birthed enterprises that will take the pass-off and carry the leadership torch in the future, will be those that bring together knowledge-based coordinated teams that can flex and adjust to the currents, without breaking.

Get Stuff Done

Mr. Duggan identifies the new framework for young companies, from how to hire, share goals, how to codify the values of an organization, and establish the company culture.

When it comes to hiring, Mr. Duggan notes that there are some basic priciples he adheres to:

1. the most important thing is to have a framework that everybody in the company knows. So make is simple.

2. hire people who are experts in their domain. It’s really about excellence.

3. I’m looking for “sparkle.” Is this person contagiously enthusiastic?

4. look for people who just get stuff done. We’re very focused on metrics — we have goals and controls, and everybody in the company has them. Its empowering and transparent.

5. require every candidate to do homework; provide an assignment without guidelines or timelines to see what they do with it; it reveals knowledge, process and commitment.

Mr. Duggan spoke about goals:

I think organizations have a hard time communicating up and down the chain of command and getting everybody mobilized to focus on the same goals. I’ve experienced that firsthand — whatever your task or scope of work, you don’t know how that connects to your manager and your manager’s manager, and how that is all kind of interconnected.”

Within my own company I often cite and recite over and over again the short-term and long-term goals of the company, and the tasks required to get us there. Still it is at times like trying to herd a pack of wild cats; you no sooner get one focused and comprehending and three others are out of the box.

Yet cross-department understanding of goals is worth investing the time in achieving. In this day and age a company has to breathe together; each expertise and energy a piece of the overall living brain of the company, which can thrive or suffocate.

In the six short years since Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s iPhone to the world—with his famous 4,000 Starbucks lattes prank—smartphones have become for many people, an absolute necessity in their lives.

The smartphone may also well be the most important productivity tool in—and out of—the office. This year an estimated 200 million workers will tap into mobile business apps to collaborate and conference, access and edit docs, check email, chat and more on the go.

But there’s one dirty little secret: Most mobile business apps kill more time than they save. I preview hundreds of apps on the job at HootSuite, a social media management tool used by Fortune 100 companies, mom-and-pop businesses and five million users around the globe. And I see countless apps that make big promises and don’t deliver. They’re non-intuitive, with clunky interfaces. They have tiny user bases and no customer support. They make simple tasks - like making a to-do list - ridiculously complex.

But the best of the bunch really do make working on the go easier. These seven free mobile business apps - a mix of tried-and-true classics and road-tested upstarts - merit a spot in the phone of any office warrior this year.

Brewster: Instant Rolodex - Between Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn - not to mention your email client - you likely have hundreds, if not thousands, of colleagues and customers you interact with. Brewster is a handy mobile app that pulls in contact info and other details from all of those platforms and creates eye-catching, in-depth profiles for each and every person. Using a “relationship algorithm,” the app automatically sorts contacts into “favorites,” “trending” and other lists, and even sends out gentle reminders when you’re falling out of touch with someone. Another benefit: Brewster is fully searchable - not just by name, but keyword, location and even photo.

Here on Biz: Meet your LinkedIn contacts in real life - Virtual connections are great, but nothing beats a face-to-face meeting. With Here on Biz, you can instantly see which of your LinkedIn contacts (as well as other LinkedIn users) are physically nearby, segmented into visitors and locals. Request a connection and you can chat directly via the app, ideally setting up the kind of in-person encounter that gets results. Here on Biz proves especially useful at conferences when trying to make sense of a sea of new faces and maximize meeting time. The app is free to use, though it is somewhat limited by the fact that only LinkedIn users actually running the Here on Biz app show up in searches.

HootSuite: All your social media, anywhere - Yes, HootSuite is my company. But it’s not just fatherly pride when I say HootSuite Mobile is an amazing app for handling social media on the go. Just like the web version, the app allows for publishing to all of your social networks - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc - from one interface. You can schedule messages for optimum times, attach files and photos and shrink links, all with a few taps. Advanced users can even set up streams for monitoring customer feedback on social networks, track clients and keywords across different platforms and more. But don’t just take my word for it. Says Mashable: “[HootSuite is] the premier dashboard for companies looking to get analysis of their social media efforts.”

Dropbox: Your hard drive, anywhere - Here’s an oldie but goodie. According to urban legend, Dropbox was hatched back in 2007 when MIT grad and founder Drew Houston got fed up with always forgetting his memory sticks around campus. His solution: a seamless, cloud-based system to sync files across all of your devices. Just drag files or folders into the Dropbox folder, and they’ll sync across phones, PCs, laptops, tablets, etc., automatically. Edit from anywhere and changes are saved and synced (You can even access older and deleted versions of files). Dropbox gives you 2GB for free (or up to 18GB if you refer friends) and has paid plans for users with bigger needs. You can also designate certain files as favorites, making them available offline - especially handy for frequent flyers and off-the-grid travelers.

A T-Mobile customer service nightmare awaited me upon my return to New York City. After a long-extended stay overseas –, I thought I was returning to the “1st” world,” you know the land of innovation, efficiency and the highest standards of customer service excellence. Is there any other industry beyond cellular that can charge more, provide less, and make your life miserable in the process?

The first cell-phone I purchased was in 1986. The receiver looked a lot like a home phone, but cradled into a large 5lb battery pack.

1985

It cost $3,000 and $1 per minute. The technology has evolved and advanced quite a bit since then. Yet service remains inflexible and unaccommodating, and I can’t help but wonder how we’ve all been lulled into a state of hypnotic willingness to accept it.

The past few months I have been in India, and it was there that I bought my first Smart phone: great technology! And all-in-all, the service was good. I could walk into any cell-phone store and buy talk and data minutes as needed. And, I could use my phone as a Hot-Spot to connect my computer to Internet. being on the Internet daily, I would buy 3G-data minutes in packs of 10GB; talk-time I would buy in much smaller increments. There were no imposed limits to whatever combination of talk, text, and data minutes I could purchase.

A T-Mobile customer servicenightmare awaited me upon my return to New York City

When I arrived back in New York City for a one-month on business, my first order of business was to get a local SIM for my phone.

I stopped in at the T-Mobile store on 6th ave at 16th street. I explained that I had a Mi-Fi Hot-Spot account in NYC with Clear Communications that gave me unlimited 4G internet for $50 a month (I bought it a year earlier when I was still living here), but wanted to compare what T-mobile offered to see if I could avoid using two services by combining voice/text/data and hot-Spot tethering. For “unlimited talk, text & high-speed internet we have a plan for $70 a month.” Seemed like a no-brainer.

I swiped my card, activated the account, installed the SIM … and the Hot Spot didn’t work. The girl who recommended the plan was miffed. Being pressed for time, I requested she simply cancel the plan, switch me to a simple voice plan and I’d go have my Clear Hot Spot activated.

She THEN informed that the plan was “Non-Refundable.”

After a few minutes of back and forth it was clear [to me] that she was clueless to the irrationality of the situation. Is it being unreasonable of me to expect that since the product I purchased minutes before didn’t work that I should be refunded? Apparently, according to T-Mobile, the answer is YES!

I headed out into the cold to attend to take care of other errands, still fuming that I wasted $70.

Uptown I stopped into the T-Mobile store on the corner of 54th and 3rd avenue. The girl there seemed eager to help, and more importantly, actually capable to do so. She knew right away that my Sony-Erickson Xperia Arch wasn’t compatible [to tether as a Hot Spot with my computer] on their network, at least at speeds beyond 2G.

She shook her head, “She should have known that this phone was incompatible with our network.”

So now what? The plan was nonrefundable, but noted that I could use the money already paid and simply apply it to a different plan. Progress! So I said I wanted to just buy X minutes, text and data. Turns out T-Mobile, or anyone that I am currently aware of for that matter, doesn’t provide that. They have a variety of plans, all grouped packages of minutes, text and data combinations.

None of those accommodated my needs.

Here is an industry that enjoys the luxury of charging the third highest rates in the world, without having to provide us the flexibility we require. Instead they herd us into their prepacked products, forcing square pegs into round holes.

What other industry would we tolerate this from? Any? So why do we allow it from cellphone companies?

I chose the best option available to me and had the plan switched to a 1500 minutes talk/text plan, with not enough data to mention. The balance [from my first $70 payment] would be on account to use towards this new plan in the future I was assured.

I had my Clear Hot Spot activated at Best Buy and was back in business. I thought.

When the T-Mobile minutes were used up you’d think that the money I had on account would cover the rollover. Nope. The phone simply stopped working. I went back to the store. After a lot of confusion they eventually had it reactivated.

Fast forward eighteen days. My minutes again ran out. There was no plan between the one I had and the $70 a month for unlimited everything, including the data plan I couldn’t use. I was stuck. I was racing to make a meeting and stopped in at 54th and 3rd again; swiped my card, received an instant receipt via text, and was told “all set.”

However, en route to one meeting — while attempting to call and confirm the meeting place for the one to follow — my calls wouldn’t go through. The second appointment was blown.

I returned to the store and waited, annoyed but patient, for all the customers before me to be served. When it was my turn I stepped up and explained that I paid to recharge the phone thirty minutes earlier, received a confirmation text, but every time I attempted a call I heard an auto-message telling me that the call was not authorized on the network.

“What’s problem are you having?” I was asked. “The message that the call was not authorized on the network!” I repeated, feeling like I had again been returned to the land of the stupid — in a far off galaxy known as T-Mobile.

She took the phone, and had begun typing on her computer. Minutes later, after some testing, she handed it back to me and said “OK, it’s working now.”

“And what was the problem?” I inquired “Oh, it was a problem on our end; it’s fixed now,” — as though somehow because they fixed their error, that they had done me some great favor –, completely ignorant to the wasted time and effort I incurred from the incident.

So you think you have the next great idea! A sure-fire business success waiting to happen and you know if you can just get that idea before someone with money that you’ll be on your way to start up funding, right? Sorry, but no, it’s not that simple; there are many types of funding vehicles and as many different investor personalities as there are ideas.

What kind of start up funding do you seek?

Because a business is a start-up, doesn’t by itself identify the type of funding sources that may or may-not be available for it. What is more relevant is the type of business you are — or intend to be. So before you can begin raising money for your start-up you need to do some homework to ascertain what type of investors might be interested in your business concept.

Is your start-up a service or product-based business? Will you be first-to-market to fulfill a void, or use what you believe to be a new and better mouse-trap to compete in an existing marketplace? Is your product or service patentable? Do you have an experienced management team? — Investors bet not only on the horse, but on the jockey as well!

For a start-up business there are essentially five primary sources of funding:

1. Loans from a bank(s) or the Small Business Association is an inexpensive source of capital, provided that, in regard to the former you have good strong personal credit to back up the loan, or, in regard to the later you can present a strong business plan that is deemed by their review team to have a good chance to succeed. It is also an advantage with SBA if you’re a minority owned business.

2. Venture Capital firms (or VCs) tend to work with start-ups that lend themselves to patentable business processes or products — or exclusive access to emerging trends, and will invest millions (or tens of millions) of dollars to develop them. Bio, communication and green technologies are a favorite amongst VCs, but most VCs have a core skill to recognize novel technologies or businesses trends that have huge profit potential: FedEx, Starbucks, Google, Microsoft, and eBay are examples. With start-ups they not only provide funding, but many times may recruit and place strong executives in key positions within your business, such as CEO or CFO. They provide funding and other services in exchange for equity ownership – usually substantial ownership — which they will realize profits from when they convert it into tradable public stock (through an Initial Public Offering – IPO) or outright sale of the business at a later date: the exit strategy. There are many online directories and online communities for VCs, such as the Geabler Directory, Funding Post and many others. There are also investor related conferences and summits (The New York Venture Summit and New York Entrepreneur Week., for example) and investor associations (such as the National Venture Capital Association, Visiting as many sites as possible will get you acquainted with their motives, interests and expectations. (I will post a comprehensive list of VCs and events, as well as interviews with many of them, in a subsequent article).

3. Angel investors, like VCs, are not an easy sell. According to AngelSoft, a website that pairs entrepreneurs seeking funding with Angel groups, searchable by zip code, only about twenty-five percent of entrepreneurs get past the initial screening process, and overall only about one percent get funded. However, Angels will provide funding in more traditional areas – like real estate, for example — that VCs tend to not consider. You can see of list of Angel Investment Groups here.

4. Friends and family and/or Private Investors are more suitable if you’re looking to open a small café, bar, store, or even offer a service or sell a product (anything from music to T-shirts). Private investors are all around if you know where to look and how to spot them: I will address in a forthcoming article.

5. Reverse Merger. Working with the same concept that a VC does, there are those that specialize in reverse mergers – finding a public company with no operating units (referred to as a “Public Shell”) and then merging the “shell” with an exciting start-up or existing small business. The merger specialist will – in some cases — raise seed capital in exchange for equity in the merged entity to get you operating, usually in the range of $5,000 to $100,000. The public vehicle will often trade on the OTC (over-the-counter) market, often referred to as the “pink sheets.” If additional operating funds are needed, the deal-maker will assist in preparing an Offering Circular, Form 1-A — the penny stock equivalent of an S-1 IPO, to raise additional development and expansion funding from the public; usually ranging between $100,000 to $500,000 for small businesses. These are but the most common traditional methods of raising startup capital, but certainly not the only sources. If you’re an operating business you can access cash through receivable financing.

If you’re a product based company with a unique product or brand, in some cases you can obtain distributor advances. But before you can begin to seek out money you need to have a clear business plan. Based on that plan you can then begin to identify the most likely candidates with potential interest in providing funding.

Busy bloggers often have to find ways to work on the go, from typing out posts on a laptop in cafe to using a tablet to check e-mail between meetings. There are many apps that can make the work easier and more convenient, allowing bloggers to do things like optimization their site or check their analytics right on their smart phone or tablet. Here are some of the best apps we found for bloggers:

SEO Automatic Get real-time SEO analysis of your page, including headers, meta tags, photo tags, and many other page elements. You can understand how successful your blog is in its SEO strategy and get suggestions on what to fix. $9.99.

Hoot Suite Mange all your social media profiles at once on the go. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Four Square and more are available. You can send and schedule updates, track your statistics, and monitor keywords and trending topics. Free.

Read It Later Bookmark web pages to read later for research and inspiration with this app. You don’t have to have an Internet connection to access the pages. Link all your computers and devices with the app so that you can read articles you have saved anywhere. Free.

Catch Capture ideas, voice memos, photos and more with this app that lets you sync your notes with all your devices. You can be sure you’re ready when inspiration strikes, no matter where you are. Free.

Diigo Collect all kinds of content from the Web, including pages, articles, photos, and more. You can annotate Web site with notes or highlight information you need. Create a digital notebook of ideas and information for reference wherever you are. Free.

Blogsy If you blog on several sites using several different platforms, this tool can help you to update them all. You can also add photos and videos, and edit past articles. $4.99. Do you have another favorite app that you use to make blogging easier? Tell us about it in the comments!

About the author:

Heather Green is a freelance writer for several regional magazines in North Carolina as well as a resident blogger for onlinenursingdegrees.org. Her writing experience includes fashion, business, health, agriculture and a wide range of other topics. Heather has just completed research on online health care admin degree and online physical therapy assistant courses.